Dear Harriet Harman MP,
My name is Mustafa Al-Bassam and I am a member of your constituency in Southwark. As a teenager I was charged in the UK with computer hacking offences and was sentenced to 320 hours of community service and a suspended sentence of 20 months.
I am now a 21 year old reformed and productive member of society who has just completed a computer science degree at King's College London, and I have recently accepted an offer to do a PhD at University College London funded by the newly government-formed Alan Turing Institute. I also work part time in Canary Wharf as a technology advisor for an international payments processing company.
The focus of this letter however is not about me, but my friend Lauri Love who is a British citizen that is being pursued by the FBI in the United States of America for alleged computer hacking offences, despite not being charged in the UK.
Mr Love is an engineering university student and computer scientist from Stradishall in the UK. He is facing potential extradition to the United States for his alleged involvement in a series of online protests that followed the persecution and untimely death of Aaron Swartz. He is being pursued by the US criminal justice system for allegedly protesting abuses of that same system, with prosecutors in three US court districts accusing Mr Love of hacking into various government websites.
Mr Love was first arrested on 28 October 2013 for alleged offences under the UK's Computer Misuse Act. Nine months later, Mr Love's police bail was allowed to expire and he was not charged due to a lack of evidence against him.
Then on 15 July 2015, Mr Love was arrested again by UK officials, this time at the behest of the US government, who had issued several indictments and corresponding extradition warrants. The FBI and Department of Justice allege that Mr Love has been involved in hacking into various governmental agencies, including the US Army, NASA, the Federal Reserve and the Environmental Protection Agency. Mr Love's extradition hearing will be held on 28 and 29 June 2016.
Mr Love's case bears very close resemblance to Gary McKinnon's case, who fought a 10 year computer hacking extradition battle against the FBI. Mr McKinnon, who was accused of hacking into US military and NASA networks, claimed that he was looking for evidence of UFOs. Mr McKinnon ultimately won after Home Secretary Theresa May squashed the FBI's extradition warrant due to concerns over Mr McKinnon's mental health as he was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and battled with depression and anxiety.
Like Mr McKinnon, Mr Love is also diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and suffers from depression and anxiety; he needs to be close to his family and needs health care that he would not be able to access in the US prison system. Human Rights Watch, reporting on the state of US prison conditions, has noted "disturbing delays in providing vital medical help" and "serious concerns about the overall quality of medical help for federal inmates." Mr Love would be thrust into a cell an ocean away from the support system that has sustained him.
In fact, the British public and MPs have previously accepted and took action against the identical circumstances of Mr McKinnon's case. In early November 2008, eighty British MPs signed an Early Day Motion calling for any custodial sentence imposed by an American court against Mr McKinnon to be served in a prison in the UK and on 15 July 2009 and many voted in Parliament for a review of the extradition treaty.
The UK's extradition treaty with the US has had a very controversial history. Its shortcomings means that the United States is not obliged to present a prima facie case against Lauri Love, or disclose any of the alleged evidence against him. This is vital because his US attorney, Tor Ekeland, has gone on the record about the US government negligence that forms the basis of the indictments.
These shortcomings are well recognized among MPs; a series of Parliamentary inquiries over the past five years has identified further concerns with the treaty - particularly the inability of those facing UK-to-US extradition to address the evidence against them, which is available to those facing extradition from the US to the UK. The treaty is one-sided.
In the wake of Mr McKinnon's case, the British government acknowledged some of the concerns around extradition by introducing a "forum bar" in 2013, an additional statutory bar to extradition that can be invoked by a defendant to question whether the UK is in fact the proper place to hear a case. The effectiveness of the forum bar has been questioned by legal commentators and it has not really been tested in court.
Nevertheless, the conduct of UK prosecutors in Mr Love's case raises questions about whether there has been a genuine attempt to bring a case in the UK: on the face of it, that is exactly the kind of behaviour the forum bar was intended to prevent. The NCA's lack of regard for proper procedure is systematic. Even they acknowledge that almost 90% of their warrants for search and seizure fall short of the proper standards. If the forum bar means anything, it should apply in Mr Love's case: the NCA have demonstrated that they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Mr Love has never been to the United States and his alleged actions took place while he was in the United Kingdom. Other countries refuse to extradite in similar cases. The UK public knows that the way US extradition requests are processed in the UK is one-sided and those concerns have been acknowledged by legislators. If Mr Love has a case to answer, he should be entitled to see the evidence against him and mount a properly prepared legal defence, in front of a jury of his peers.
If the new forum bar set forth by the government to prevent unjust cases like Mr McKinnon's from occurring again is to mean anything at all, it is absolutely vital that this issue should be bought up in Parliament and to the Home Secretary, because it appears that this new legislation is being completely ignored by the NCA and I fear that the grave injustice that the forum bar is designed to prevent may tragically occur again.
Furthermore, I also fear that if Mr Love is extradited to the US and is found guilty, he would not be afforded the opportunity to be a reformed and productive member of society ever again. While I am lucky enough that the UK justice system has afforded me the opportunity to become successfully reformed, I feel that this is unlikely in the US as many of my US co-conspirators have received very harsh and lengthy jail sentences of up to ten years, as well as hefty fines of over $600,000 that they must spend the rest of their lives repaying. This is especially true with Mr Love as his mental condition would only worsen if extradited.
I therefore kindly request of you to consider taking the following action:
- Ask the Home Secretary to consider squashing the US's extradition request under the same circumstances that she squashed Mr McKinnon's extradition request.
- Ask the Home Secretary what she is doing to prevent the US from performing the same extradition actions that the forum bar was designed to prevent in Mr Love's case.
- Raise an early day motion that Mr Love's case should be heard in the UK and/or any jail sentence imposed should be served in the UK.
Lastly, I would like to add that the last time a member of my family has contacted you was in 2003. My father contacted you in regards to some missing documentation from the Home Office concerning his right to work in the UK, as we originally came to the UK as Iraqi refugees. You very kindly contacted the Home Office regarding this issue and as a result my father has been employed for the past twelve years as an NHS doctor. I hope you will also take notice to this letter.
Yours sincerely,
Mustafa Al-Bassam
very nice! no one wants to see lauri love extradited, for protest accusations.